A few years ago, we covered the photographer Christopher Payne’s incredible work inside the Steinway & Sons factory in Astoria, Queens. Payne’s background as an architect clearly informs the spatial composition of his photographs, of which many took long hours to set up. More than just beautiful images, Payne’s work captures an important legacy of New York City’s manufacturing present, highlighting how handcrafted, highly technical objects can still be produced here. In many ways, his work pre-dates the city’s obsession with things small-batch and handcrafted: Steinway pianos take one year to make.

Payne’s patience has paid off in so many of his projects – regular visits to North Brother Island in all seasons, battling poison ivy, snow, and rickety abandoned buildings – led to the book North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City. Now, he’s self-published the book Making Steinway: An American Workplace. The photos capture the production process and the skilled workers at the Steinway factory, revealing pieces of the instruments that will never be visible to the public.

As he tells Untapped Cities, “One thing that we’ve done in the book, which is very effective, is juxtapose historic photos of the factory from 1916 with their modern day counterparts, 100 years later. They show, in some cases, how little has changed and how the pianos are still made very much by hand.”